Three days later, two mages came for people.
Both mid-rank. One with a scroll tucked under his arm, one with power running visibly through his hands, ready. Pei Jin was sitting against the wall when they came in, his posture identical to every other morning.
"0738. 0744." The one with the scroll read it without looking up. "Out."
0744 was the burned one. He rose first, face empty, and crossed to the door. Pei Jin followed a step behind.
Out in the corridor, others had been pulled from adjacent cells — five subjects total, lined up. Pei Jin catalogued their faces in a single sweep.
The scroll disappeared into a sleeve. "Follow."
They went up.
Pei Jin had not left the lower floor before. The stairs were rough-cut stone, the steps narrow. Blue-veined ore pressed into the walls provided what passed for light. Two floors up, the mildew smell thinned and was replaced by something astringent and faintly bitter — the evaporative residue of alchemical work, the smell that permeated any space where sustained magical practice happened.
A wider corridor. Sealed doors on both sides. At the far end, a door substantially heavier than anything below — its surface cast in some alloy Pei Jin didn't recognise, faint pulses moving through the metal like a slow heartbeat.
They weren't taken to that door.
They were brought into a room on the right: five chairs, one table, and behind the table a man in dark robes whose age was difficult to read. Still face. A stack of scrolls at his elbow.
Five sat. The man studied them in sequence. When his gaze reached Pei Jin it stopped for a beat longer than the others before moving on.
"You're here," he said, his voice flat and efficient, "because your physiological data from the last injection came back with irregularities that require confirmation. Answer what I ask. If you don't know something, say so. Don't fabricate."
He asked them each in turn: the physical sensations post-injection, location and duration of pain, any changes to perception, any changes to strength.
Pei Jin listened to the four responses before his and adjusted.
Too little and the man would know he was concealing. Too much and he'd become a priority case, something they'd want to pull upstairs immediately and start working on. What he needed was an answer that was credible, unremarkable, but not so flat it read as suppression.
"0738."
He looked up. "Heat in the bones after the injection. Gone within two days. Perception, no notable change. Strength —" He let a small pause sit there, as if looking for the right word. "Things feel marginally lighter. Lifting."
The man wrote something. Didn't follow up.
After all five had answered, he set down his brush and looked at Pei Jin again. "0738. Stay. The rest of you — out."
The door closed. Four sets of footsteps faded down the corridor.
The man in dark robes rested his chin on his interlaced fingers and observed Pei Jin with something that wasn't quite interest and wasn't quite suspicion — something more professional than either. "Did you lie to me?"
"No."
"Fine." He reached into his sleeve and set a small porcelain vial in the centre of the table. "Drink this now. If it's fine, you leave. If it isn't, we continue the conversation."
Pei Jin looked at the vial. He didn't touch it.
"Problem?" The mage's voice didn't change.
"I'm thinking about what you do after I drink it."
A silence of three seconds. Something shifted at the corner of the man's mouth — small and contained. "Sharp," he said, and put the vial away.
He looked at Pei Jin steadily. "0738. What is your real name. The kind that belonged to you before all this."
Footsteps passed in the corridor outside. Pei Jin waited until they were gone.
"Pei Jin."
The mage turned the name over, as if feeling its weight. "Pei Jin." He stood. "Come with me. I want to show you something."